The event marked the culmination of two months of organizing by leaders of the Here4TheKids movement, which is run by women of color and believes in using white female activists to protest and demonstrate in ways that would typically be ignored when carried out by minorities, the group says.
Rao, a former Colorado congressional candidate and co-author of White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better, hopes the movement will lead to a real change in gun laws — including a ban nationwide. But first, she's set her sights on Colorado.
Michaela Watkins, a former Saturday Night Live cast member and series regular on the Hulu dramedy Casual, made the trip to Denver from Los Angeles to participate in the June 5 sit-in. She says she heard about the Here4TheKids movement from word of mouth and has been using her social media channels to further spread its message.
What attracts her most to the group is its bold and unapologetic goal of banning guns, as well as its creative strategy of using white women like herself to get points across. "As white women, we have a privilege, which is we're often not the target of gun violence," Watkins tells Westword. "White women [are] historically the least statistically likely to be arrested or brutalized by police."
She adds, "We should have been here a long, long time ago."
Rao ran for Congress against Diana DeGette in 2018, then went on to start Race2Dinner with her business partner, Regina Jackson. Through that organization, Rao and Jackson host expensive dinner parties where they confront groups of white women about their conscious or subconscious complicity in white supremacy and teach them how to become anti-racists.
Race2Dinner's premise — in addition to Rao's other controversial statements and political activity during her congressional run — have made Rao a polarizing figure. She has a large social media presence and is the subject of the documentary Deconstructing Karen, which was shown to a sold-out crowd at the Sie FilmCenter in March.
Rao conceptualized the idea for Here4The Kids after a mass shooting at a private school in Nashville on March 27, which left three children and three adults dead. She's amassed a large and dedicated following of politically active white women, whom she used to kick-start the planning process for the June 5 event. Organizers under the leadership of Rao and her Here4TheKids co-founder, Tina Strawn, have been canvassing Denver for the past two months for new recruits. Rao, who currently lives in Virginia, made a trip to the city to help canvassers in mid-May.
She was in Denver on Monday for the protest, but not at the demonstration itself — because she's not white.
"We asked BIPOC folks to stay behind," she says. "History is being made in Colorado right now."
According to Wolf Terry, a Lakewood-based freelance writer who put her life on pause to join Here4TheKids' efforts after hearing about the movement on April 27, "people have flown from all over the world to be here" at the Capitol.
Rose Cabral of Sacramento wanted to participate in the protest after hearing about Here4TheKids on Instagram after the Nashville shooting. "We've been growing," she says. "I think we're going to keep growing."
Karen Tucker, a locally based protest participant, says she thinks the protest went well despite the weather, but wishes more people had showed up. "This is a process," she says. "I think some people are scared to put themselves out there."
But while Here4TheKids has succeeded in getting attention and supporters, the group failed to persuade the one person who matters most: Governor Polis.
In a statement sent out Monday, the governor's office swatted down the ongoing demand to ban firearms and force a buyback by way of an executive order: "Staff has met with the organizers and have expressed concerns that the requests being made are either unconstitutional or require legislative action. The Governor takes the weighty responsibility of executive action and the trust Coloradans placed in him to govern responsibly seriously, and will not issue an unconstitutional order that will be struck down in court simply to make a public relations statement — he will continue to focus on real solutions to help make Colorado one of the ten safest states."
The governor's office has been aware of Here4TheKids for some time. In an earlier statement to Westword, a spokesperson suggested that the proposal "would simply be unconstitutional."
Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, a pro-gun lobby group, released a statement on June 5 mocking Here4TheKids' efforts. Still, despite the governor and gun-lobby raining on the group's proverbial parade — and literal rain soaking the protesters in the afternoon — the group pressed on throughout the day.
"Nobody's done anything," Watkins concludes. "And now we are."
